how se- vere their conditions. Four of them were Corpus Christi natives, and when they returned home Fenstad set up a mental health clinic at the hospital for them. When they weren’t at his group meetings, they were hanging out at the only other public place that would have them: the library. A few of them lived in subsidized housing near the Motel 6, the only part of Corpus Christi that wasn’t solidly upper middle class. They survived on disability benefits and charity. At the library they spent their time reading books, surfing the Internet, and napping on the leather reading chairs that the Walker
family had donated. People complained, but the way Meg saw it, the library existed for the public good. So long as they didn’t bother anybody, they had a right to be here, too.
Albert was her favorite. Like a connoisseur savoring a 2001 Burgundy, he smelled new books before open- ing them. More importantly, he returned them on time. He was a voracious reader, and over the years he’d re- searched subjects that ranged from thermodynamics, to hematology, to his current obsession, Civil War camps. This last month he’d been stuck on the blight in Ameri- can history that was Andersonville, Georgia. Thirteen thousand Union soldiers died there during its two years of operation. Nearby farmers had remained silent, even while mass graves began appearing like potholes along the camp’s periphery.
Meg wasn’t keen on supporting Albert’s more maca- bre interests, but when he got ideas in his head he was adamant, and there wasn’t much she could do to dis- suade him. “Why the Civil War?” she’d asked last week. Without looking up from The Trials of an Anderson- ville Prison Guard , his head and hands shaking, he’d told her, “It’s like an organism with immune disease. Aheem. AHEEM. It’s a body that attacks itself.”
That was the tragedy. Albert was no dope. He was thirty-three years old, but his breakdown happened when he left for college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become a city planning engineer. He was eerily quick with numbers, but the separation from his family, and the pressure of classes and making new friends, had overwhelmed him. He became delu- sional and insisted that something was calling him back to Maine. He dropped out of MIT and moved home with his parents. Fifteen years later he still hadn’t recovered. He refused to medicate the problem with
antipsychotics, and instead drank booze until he passed out practically every night. Years of hard living had turned him into an old man. He was missing his eye- teeth, and the sparse tufts of hair on his head were white. He couldn’t afford real booze, so he made home brew instead. He filtered Scope through white bread, and kept it in jars under his bed while it continued to ferment. Then he drank the juice, which he called bread pudding. She knew this because the smell was noxious and his landlord had cited him for six sanitation viola- tions, which his aging parents who lived across town, at a loss, had paid.
She’d always thought of him as a gentle and tragic giant, but during a recent fit of delirium tremens at the hospital, he punched a fourteen-year-old candy striper in the throat. The candy striper happened to be a bulimic, so the muscles in her throat were paper-thin. Albert tore a hole in her esophagus. After three hours of surgery, she recovered, though her interest in medicine was, under- standably, dampened. The act was Albert’s first display of violence, but for Fenstad once was enough. He told Meg not to let Albert visit the library anymore. Told as in ordered .
Her husband was right, of course. Albert was worse with every passing day. A few weeks ago he’d confessed to her that he’d trapped a rat in his apartment, and af- ter skinning and then roasting its body over the flame of a Bic cigarette lighter, he’d eaten it. Years of bread pudding had taken their toll. His Tourette’s-like erup- tions were
family had donated. People complained, but the way Meg saw it, the library existed for the public good. So long as they didn’t bother anybody, they had a right to be here, too.
Albert was her favorite. Like a connoisseur savoring a 2001 Burgundy, he smelled new books before open- ing them. More importantly, he returned them on time. He was a voracious reader, and over the years he’d re- searched subjects that ranged from thermodynamics, to hematology, to his current obsession, Civil War camps. This last month he’d been stuck on the blight in Ameri- can history that was Andersonville, Georgia. Thirteen thousand Union soldiers died there during its two years of operation. Nearby farmers had remained silent, even while mass graves began appearing like potholes along the camp’s periphery.
Meg wasn’t keen on supporting Albert’s more maca- bre interests, but when he got ideas in his head he was adamant, and there wasn’t much she could do to dis- suade him. “Why the Civil War?” she’d asked last week. Without looking up from The Trials of an Anderson- ville Prison Guard , his head and hands shaking, he’d told her, “It’s like an organism with immune disease. Aheem. AHEEM. It’s a body that attacks itself.”
That was the tragedy. Albert was no dope. He was thirty-three years old, but his breakdown happened when he left for college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to become a city planning engineer. He was eerily quick with numbers, but the separation from his family, and the pressure of classes and making new friends, had overwhelmed him. He became delu- sional and insisted that something was calling him back to Maine. He dropped out of MIT and moved home with his parents. Fifteen years later he still hadn’t recovered. He refused to medicate the problem with
antipsychotics, and instead drank booze until he passed out practically every night. Years of hard living had turned him into an old man. He was missing his eye- teeth, and the sparse tufts of hair on his head were white. He couldn’t afford real booze, so he made home brew instead. He filtered Scope through white bread, and kept it in jars under his bed while it continued to ferment. Then he drank the juice, which he called bread pudding. She knew this because the smell was noxious and his landlord had cited him for six sanitation viola- tions, which his aging parents who lived across town, at a loss, had paid.
She’d always thought of him as a gentle and tragic giant, but during a recent fit of delirium tremens at the hospital, he punched a fourteen-year-old candy striper in the throat. The candy striper happened to be a bulimic, so the muscles in her throat were paper-thin. Albert tore a hole in her esophagus. After three hours of surgery, she recovered, though her interest in medicine was, under- standably, dampened. The act was Albert’s first display of violence, but for Fenstad once was enough. He told Meg not to let Albert visit the library anymore. Told as in ordered .
Her husband was right, of course. Albert was worse with every passing day. A few weeks ago he’d confessed to her that he’d trapped a rat in his apartment, and af- ter skinning and then roasting its body over the flame of a Bic cigarette lighter, he’d eaten it. Years of bread pudding had taken their toll. His Tourette’s-like erup- tions were
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